Elaine Hiles: Good morning everyone and welcome to our Diversity in DC Webinar. I would like to welcome our speakers today. We have Sharon Bellingham from Scottish Widows, Khalid Iqbal from MAN Group and Charlotte Whitehead from our Gowling WLG Pensions Team. I am Elaine Hiles and I will be chairing today's Webinar. I am a Senior Associate here in the Gowling Pensions Team.
Now, before we kick off, just a few housekeeping things to cover. You are very welcome… and we encourage you to ask questions throughout the Webinar, but if you could do so using the Q&A function at the bottom of your screens, rather than the chat box, that would be great. We will be picking up the questions at the end of each speaker's session and if there is time at the end of the Webinar we will pick up some further questions then. If we do run over, we will respond to any questions that we have not got around to at the end of… after today's Webinar.
Just a reminder that if you would like to view the slides side by side you can do this by clicking in the option… the view options tab at the top of your screens and you then select "view option" and then select "side by side" view.
We will be sending round a feedback survey at the end of the Webinar. We just find this useful to help us plan and prepare our future Webinars, so if you could take a few moments to complete that, that would be great. Finally, we are recording today's Webinar and after the Webinar the recording and the slides will be available on‑line. So that is the boring house stuff out of the way. So now on to the subject of today's Webinar, Diversity in DC.
When we talk about Diversity in DC, we are talking about a really broad thing. It is much bigger than just your gender, age or race. It is including things like diversity of background, of personality, of experience and diversity of ways of thinking, so it is really broad and it is really important.
And the reason it is really important is because there has been lots of evidence and research that shows better… more diverse teams make better, or tend to make better decisions and tend to achieve better financial outcomes. And ultimately, this results in better outcomes for members which is really at the core of the drive behind improving and encouraging diversity within DC and within pensions.
Industry bodies like the Pensions Regulator, the PPF and the FCA are all now engaging with this area in a meaningful way. At Gowling we have our own pensions' diversity forum which was formed in the last year and this looks both at diversity and inclusion in the context of pensions but also aims to generally raise awareness of diversity and inclusion issues within the team more generally.
Today's Webinar is going to look at a few issues in more detail that are relevant to diversity and pensions. Sharon is going to speak about the gender pension gap and what we mean by this and what we can do about it.
Charlotte is going to offer us the Gen Z perspective and their views on pensions and savings and how to engage with Gen Z. And Khalid is then going to take us through how the industry has changed over the past forty years and what still needs to happen and what are the barriers to future change.
So I will now hand over to Sharon, who is going to kick off with the gender pension gap.
Sharon Bellingham: Thanks very much for that… that warm introduction Elaine and also thanks very much for inviting me along today to come and talk to you about something that many of us are interested in and equally passionate about obviously in equal measure. I am Sharon Bellingham, Scottish Widows' Master Trust Lead, and am really delighted to be here on behalf of Scottish Widows.
We now have 16 years' worth of research and reporting under our belts and I am just going to spend a little bit of time this morning, over the next ten minutes or so, talking through some of those key points from our very most recent findings. And as a frazzled mum of three who has had a fair bit of time away from work over the years, I can directly relate to a lot of what I am going to share from our research.
I am not here to preach to anyone, I very much have my own gender pension gap to fill and I can really fully appreciate why women actually push their own savings down the list of priorities. You know when we are all busy raising a family, ferrying kids around and trying not to be too distracted by the school mums WhatsApp Group.
There is also a case to think about that many of us may be sandwich caring and that is really used to describe those of us who care for older relatives and also have dependent children. That's really driven by a combination of life expectancy… longer life expectancy and women, like myself, who have had children later on in life.
I am also going to talk a little bit about the pandemic. I think I am starting to recover from the horror of home school but, on a more serious note, we can see the impact that this has had and I think will continue to have on the gender pension gap. And we have some thoughts on the levers that we might be able to pull to further improve the position. And I think as a mum of two… sorry a mum of two boys and a daughter it does seem incredibly unfair that Hannah is immediately at a disadvantage it seems, versus her brothers, through no fault of her own, really. So, in true Chris Whitty style, I wonder if I can have the next slide please Richard. Thank you.
And I guess to start, there is some good news. This visual just frames where we are, where we have come from and it provides a really neat snapshot of the progress that we have made. We are seeing more women than ever saving adequately and we define adequately savings at Scottish Widows as 12% of salary. So we can see here that the gap between men and women is only 1% with 59% of women saving adequately and you can see that historically the number has jumped around between the 40% to 50% mark. So really super progress and it is also super to see how things have improved over time and I guess it is a reflection of both policy and education and that they are working. So, if I can have the next slide please Richard.
So just to temper the good news, whilst we can see that women are indeed saving more than before, the reality actually is that women are saving substantially less than men and we do see inequalities and certain cohorts so for example younger women, who we class as those between age 22 and 29, only 46% save adequately. And we also see some regional variants as well.
Another point to consider is the impact that the differences in average salary means and, as this slide highlights, women are saving on average £1,300 less a year than their male counterparts and there are many reasons why women earn less but clearly two of the biggest are part‑time working and that lower than average salary… lower average salary apologies. So, if I can have the next slide please.
And just thinking about some of those structural inequalities we know that three‑quarters of part‑time workers are women. We know that women are paid less than men. That is often due to the sectors that women work in and these two things can actually lead to a whopping almost £11,000 difference in the average salary. When you roll that forward to what that means in retirement, taking account the assumptions for investment returns and career breaks and part‑time working, by our calculations women currently in their 20s will retire with a pension worth, on average, approximately £100,000 less than that of a man of the same age.
And, just to think about it in a different way, to have the same size of savings at retirement a woman would have to work on until she is 102. Granted the life expectancy for a young person could now reach 100, I guess the question is "would anyone really want to work into old age?" As I said before, for me I have my own catching up to do, but it is really hard not to reflect on my daughter and the outlook that she has relative to her little brothers, but with the same education and opportunity. So can I have the next slide, so we are on fragile recovery, thank you.
And just thinking about COVID, clearly significant for everyone. Many of us have been touched whether it is our health, our financial position, whether it is us, our family, our friends and just to highlight the role that women have played through the pandemic, almost half of employed women do have critical worker status and that versus 39% of employed men. And just thinking about the NHS, over three‑quarters of the workforce are women.
Plus a survey says actually that women have been carrying out, on average, two‑thirds more childcare duties than men since the beginning of lockdown. I mean I would argue that and I think, in this house, it is considerably more but hopefully my husband is not in the audience to hear that! And women are also more likely to work in sectors which have been furloughed so those sectors being retail; arts; hospitality - and we can see that over 50% of those furloughed from the hospitality sector were women.
And, just adding to this, just over a third of women over 25 work in these so‑called shutdown sectors and there is that high proportion of furloughed female and part‑time workers. And just thinking about that women… younger women have been very heavily impacted with 49% of 25s... under 25s being furloughed and I think it is clear that the pandemic has increased the challenge that women in their 20s currently face.
And the health impact on ethnic minority groups is clear however a point to consider as well is how many ethnic minority groups are also paid less, an hourly difference of 28%. Equally our 2020 research highlighted that a third of self‑employed women had no retirement provision and we have seen during the pandemic less women eligible for the self‑employed income support scheme than men to help them through COVID.
And finally, women are more… far more likely to take on the additional caring responsibilities during the COVID pandemic and, with really little notice, all those additional responsibilities have come in for parents. So childcare; teaching at home and evidence reflects that mums, in particular, have been impacted and are 1.5 more times more likely to have either have lost their jobs or quit than the fathers. And I think these situations are really real and whilst we can see the great progress that we have made it does flag some of the structural inequalities in women's earnings and the impact this has had, which is very stark for many. And if we can move to the next slide please.
So we… at Scottish Widows we have a number of really interesting real life case studies that we have taken from the research and this is just one of them. So if we just look at Amira's experiences and where she finds herself - she has experienced significant uncertainty during the pandemic. She is currently on maternity leave receiving statutory pay, she has split from her partner and is now living with her parents and indeed her dad has been made redundant due to the pandemic. And this leaves her to be the only member of the household with an income and she has children to care for and you know with her current financial uncertainty, she actually wants to access the money in her pension now, not in 30 years' time.
And it is not just about Amira's personal financial difficulties, obviously it has impacted on her parents, obviously her child's financial security as well. And we see that household savings are being severely squeezed for those hardest hit by the pandemic and actually further widening the gap between the haves and the have nots. And clearly Amira does not see retirement as an immediate financial priority, which is totally understandable. Next slide please.
So, how do we make a difference? I think if we think about the prevailing pension system in the UK. Really the foundations were laid at a time when the roles of men and women were actually quite different and typically at the time when men went to work, women stayed at home with the family, there was less divorce, fewer unmarried couples and also fewer single parent families.
We also need to think about the shift in pension policy landscape, the decline in defined benefit schemes and also we are familiar with the introduction of auto‑enrolment. There is also a change in social trends, it is likely that more of us have more caring responsibilities and many of us are having children later on. It is certainly not a simple case of just telling women to save more into their pension, there are some significant affordability barriers to consider. But we do think there are some policy changes that would help, some levers that could be pulled, for example, so things like automatically including pension in divorce assets.
Our research reveals that almost half of women have no idea what happens to pensions when couples get divorced and it is also interesting to consider whether what protections could be introduced for unmarried couples. Also enhanced maternity provisions to help pension payments… keep pension payments at pre‑maternity leave levels throughout maternity leave. And also we believe that the evolution of AE will be bringing more people into savings and we believe that 12% of pensions is adequate but 15% really is needed to be more comfortable. And we would really like these contributions to be increased to this level with employers continuing to pay even when there is opt out.
And just on the subject of auto‑enrolment, you know that mechanism for the self‑employed and that would make a big difference. And to support younger women, we believe that lowering the minimum age to 18 will help their long term savings. And also we would like to see the earnings threshold scrapped to bring in part‑time workers and I think this would help a significant amount of women within a short space of time and really support their long term savings.
And as well as some of these fundamental changes, there is… education and engagement can really help and I guess how many of us were actually thinking about our retirement income in our early 20s? And notwithstanding the engagement challenge that a lot of us grapple with, knowledge is key and a lack of knowledge is, in our findings, one of the main reasons why many women really do not want to engage with their retirement planning.
So thinking about target communications, helping women appreciate the importance of regular savings and also being able to recognise the right level of contributions required to fund a comfortable retirement and that just takes us to our final slide. I am just conscious that I have only really scratched the surface there, we have got many, many years of research. It is a bit of a whistle stop tour. If you are interested in understanding more, I would really encourage you to seek out our reports and take a look at our hub. We have got lots of great content on there and lots of really interesting case studies as well, so thank you.
Elaine: Thanks very much Sharon, that was really interesting and some really interesting statistics as well. We have had a question… we have had a few questions through, so I will put one to you now and maybe we can pick the rest up at the end if there is time. So someone has asked, do you think that sidecar savings or increased flexibilities in accessing pension benefits could play a part in supporting the gender pension gap?
Sharon: Yes I do, is the short answer and I think it has wider appeal too, not clearly just… not for women but, if we think about it in the context of the gender pension gap specifically. Our research showed that some women are put off from saving for retirement due to the inaccessibility point. It is a real issue for many and many women want to know that they have the ability to access money in case of emergencies. Particularly those in the younger age bracket as well, which is not surprising.
So, I think it would be a positive step to bring in greater flexibility into pension products and also the sidecar savings is a neat solution as well in terms of help kicking off that savings culture and I know that nesting sites have been running a pilot initiative and I think the results have so far proved incredibly positive.
Elaine: Great, thank you very much. I am conscious of time so I am going to handover now to Charlotte, who is going to offer us a fresh perspective on diversity in DC.
Charlotte Whitehead: Hello everyone. So, as Elaine has mentioned, my name is Charlotte and I am a newly qualified solicitor in the Pensions Team at Gowling. So, today I wanted to talk briefly about my experience about saving for a pension, as a young person, and the ways in which the industry can engage young people to save.
So I did not really know anything about pensions before starting my training seat in the Pensions Team as a trainee solicitor. Now, I can appreciate that pensions is now such a large industry and there are so many engaging and varied issues which all of us in the pensions world deal with and think about on a day to day basis. Obviously, I really enjoyed my time as a trainee in the team and wanted to qualify into this area of law and I would like to think that this shows that pension issues can be really interesting and engaging to young people like me.
It was during my training seat that I got involved with Gowling's Pensions' Governance Committee, which I am still part of today. Now the aim of having a committee is to represent young employees at the firm so that we can increase the engagement of younger people with their pensions which I think is really important and interesting. Before working in Pensions, I was not even aware that young people were not saving enough into their pensions which I think probably highlights that there is a problem.
So I set out on this slide, a couple of statistics which highlight the problem of getting young people to save. So you can see that a quarter of people under the age of 35 have no pension savings at all and around half of 22-29 year olds are not saving enough for their retirement above poverty line.
Now I do not think the findings of this research is that surprising, I am 25 and even though I am a pensions solicitor and I deal with and think about pensions every day, I find it really hard to visualise myself as a pensioner. And I think this means it is hard to feel motivated to put money away when it feels as though there are so many other more immediate priorities. So, if we can move on to the next slide please. Thanks.
I think a lot of people of my age feel similarly, in that our biggest savings priority is to get onto the property ladder and save for a house deposit. These days, the average age to buy a house is getting older. Currently around the age of 34 and so pension saving is probably just going to get pushed further and further down younger people's priority lists.
There are also young people who might just not think that they're in a position to think about saving at all. For example, those who may be self-employed, who have faced financial difficulties as a result of COVID or who perhaps work in a gig economy.
Now the pensions regulator recently published a strategy paper called 'Pensions for the Future' and this noted that one of the key areas of focus for millennial savers is to increase participation in workplace pensions.
From reflecting on my experience as a young person, as well as discussions that we have had on the governance committee, I thought I would run through a few ways to help engage young employees and members with their pensions. If you could move onto the next slide please. Thanks.
Firstly, I do not think that young people view the pensions industry as being quite as tech savvy as other industries, such as banks. I think young people want to do things as quickly as possible, with as little effort as possible. These days paying bills, checking balances and so on, can all be done via apps on our phones. For example, just to pay a payment into my savings account, all I need to do is hover my thumb over my iPhone and it's done for me and I do not even need to answer a password.
In contrast, I just do not think that many young people even know how to view their pension pot online or how to go about increasing their contributions. Pensions literature is often sent by post, but these days young people just do not really engage with post that is sent to them, especially as lots of people in their twenties might be living in rented accommodation and move around a lot.
I think it is key for pension providers and employers to be innovative in their use of technology to help engage young people with their pensions. It is common for young people at the beginning of their careers to change jobs often and short term or flexible employment contracts are becoming so much more common.
I think this means that young people might end up with a number of small savings pots, which they just are not keeping on top of. Without easy online access to view your pension pot online, I just do not think young savers will keep track of their savings and will probably just forget all about their pension.
Ultimately, I think it will be really hard to successfully engage a new generation of savers without accessible online access to their pensions.
As part of my role on the governance committee, I collated the thoughts of the trainee solicitors at Gowling to gauge their views on pensions. The general view was that they thought that they probably had a pension, but had no idea how much they were contributing or knew really what a pension was.
I just cannot see how young people can engage with their pensions when they do not actually know what one is. This has been echoed by the pensions regulator who have said that their research has shown that the majority of millennials feel that they just do not know enough about pensions to make suitable choices.
Perhaps as an example, a lot of young employees probably do not appreciate the free money element that they get in the form of employer contributions and tax relief. This could lead some young people who are not saving into a pension, to miss out on this massive financial help. I think it is crucial for providers or employers to provide basic information about pensions to young savers in an accessible way.
Having an understanding of pensions is so important in order to make informed choices about pension saving. I also think that young people communicate very differently to pensioners and as a result this should mean that providers and employers need to adjust their tone and messaging accordingly.
Pensioners or those who are nearing retirement are more likely to be educated about pensions because they have that active interest in their savings. Maybe they are more likely to read pensions literature that is sent to them or that they want to speak to a customer services assistant on the phone and have a conversation about their savings.
However young people are probably more likely to be engaged when they are presented with just clear and simple information that is relevant to them. Receiving a big booklet in the post setting out your annual benefits statement, which is filled with lots of jargon can feel overwhelming and sometimes inaccessible.
I also think that young people perhaps could be interested to learn about where their money is being invested. Learning about ESG issues is an area that I have found really interesting and topical and my generation is very alive to environmental change and social justice issues and so talking about green investing and ESG investments might help to engage young savers with their pensions. Both because they find the topic interesting and because they want to make sure that their pension fund is investing ethically.
I also think that young people probably need to be given a bit of a reality check about their future retirement prospects. As I have mentioned, as a young saver it is really hard to envisage how much you need for a lifestyle that is forty years away. The regulators 'Pensions for the Future' paper noted that whilst automatic enrolment is having a significant impact on millennials, these savers will typically make the statutory minimum level of contributions and they are more erratic employment patterns and varied contract types could make ongoing pension saving a challenge.
I think that a lot of young savers probably operate on a misguided assumption that if they meet the minimum level of contributions through automatic involvement, then that is enough. To combat this, using resources such as the PLSA retirement living standards could work as a good conversation starter for getting young people engaged.
Research conducted by the BI team and Scottish Widows, discovered that labelling can make a difference too. So this is where members are told that their contributions at a certain percentage would keep them above the poverty level at retirement. Whereas a higher contribution would put them at a more comfortable lifestyle. I think this is a helpful and accessible way to help young people think about how much they need to save. Making it clear that now is a really good time to start saving and that saving as early as possible is really important, are key messages to spread.
I just think that many young people probably have not given any real thought to their future retirement and so just prompting them to think about the future is helpful. I hope it has been helpful to hear the experiences of a younger person saving for retirement.
To sum up, I think there are lots of opportunities to engage younger people to help them save and thinking about the perspectives of different types of savers is really important. At the end of the day, young people just are not going to make the first move and so providers and employers need to give real thought to how their approach their relationship with their younger members and employees. This could involve thinking about your strategy towards using technology innovatively or perhaps making smaller nudges to those who fall into this younger age bracket and without taking action, I think there is a real risk that there is going to be a whole generation of savers who will be living in blissful ignorance until it is too late.
I think that was everything I wanted to talk about, so will hand back to you Elaine.
Elaine: Great. Thank you very much Charlotte. There was some really interesting food for thought there. We have had some questions through. Here we go:
How can we combat the impact of the pandemic on young people's ability to save?
Charlotte: Yes. I think that now is a really good opportunity to approach young people. There might have been a group of young people at the beginning of the pandemic who could have reduced or stopped their contributions because they were worried about the impact of the pandemic on their financial position. So prompting young people now, to think about their pension saving could be a really good time when people might be feeling a little bit more confident.
I also think that the pandemic has impacted people a different way. Obviously there are those who have been really severely financial affected by the pandemic. I think there are also a lot of young people who have kept their full time job during all the lockdowns. They might have temporarily moved back to their parent's house and they definitely decreased their outgoings substantially so they might be sitting on quite a lot of savings at the moment.
I think now prompting young people to think about pensions savings when they might actually be in a good position to do so, is a really good time. I also think that the pandemic has been a really big marker in people's lives and has had an impact on people's finances. I think it shows the importance of saving for the future, so spreading that message I think is really important.
Elaine: Great. Thank you very much. I am going to pass over now to Khalid who is going to offer us his views and tell us a bit about the industry that he has been working in for a long time. So over to you Khalid.
I think you might be on mute, Khalid. There we go. That should be good now.
Khalid: Thank you very much Elaine and thank you for Gowlings giving me this platform to just talk about my experiences that I have had over the last 40 years or so. Well I would say about thirty-ish years because ten years were spent in another industry.
I just wanted to take you through my career first so you have an idea of where I have been. I started as a research biologist specialising in genetics with BP and then transferred to BP pensions where I trained in BP pensions department.
Since then, I have been in pensions from 1982 onwards. The companies that I have worked for: British Petroleum, British Olivetti Limited, Cargill PLC. Head of Pensions for London Borough of Hackney. BBC Pension Fund and Johnson Controls Group who I retired out of.
Interestingly, when I joined BP, research all those years ago, there were 3,500 people working there and there only three ethnic minority workers among the 3,500 people. Me being one of them and the research centre which was at Sunbury on Thames, surrounded by three boroughs which have large immigrant populations. I would let you draw your own conclusions about that.
Most of these companies I worked for was as pensions manager - corporate pensions manager and I had mainly local, white/grey suited men in charge of pensions. Interestingly I interviewed over a number of companies during my career. And went through some gruelling selection processes to be told that I had been selected only that they needed the approval from either the board of the chairman of the trustees and only for them to come back with strange excuses like, I did not speak three or four European languages and that kind of thing.
There had been some bad experiences. Interestingly it was easier to get a job with American companies than with British companies for some reason. Could I have the next slide please.
So once I retired, I fell into some contract work and that work has been unrelenting for some reason and so I worked for the Freudenberg Group which is a German group. Aluminium Company of America. TUI Travel Plc where I was supporting the Thompson Airways Pension Trustees. Accenture Group Plc and for the last six years I have been at MAN Group, which is part of the VW Group.
Now interestingly, my experience has been more valued in post-retirement than it was at the time when I was working as a career. And it is less issues of ethnicity and/or age. In retirement, they seem to just want somebody with a relevant experience and they are not very ageist and it is a bit of a contrast, whereas during my career I also had an ageist problem with some of the companies. Next slide please.
So I have had some very good experiences where I have had - introduced to people by people in pensions where they have taught me lots of stuff because I am coming from a scientific background. I had a hell of a lot to catch up from the acts, from the 1921 Act onwards. I had lots of help but they were also, as I said, a lot of negative experiences which sort of stopped me getting the jobs that I really wanted to do and the challenges I wanted to have. And as I said, there was the experience of age discrimination where one company thought because my daughter was at university, I am probably too old for them to consider.
I am not sure why they did that and my experiences retiring, as I said, has been fantastic and there have been no so barriers. Next slide please.
The first time I attended an NAPF conference was in 1985 and I seem to be the only person of colour at that conference. And I remember like yesterday, at Harrogate. There were only three women holding any kind of position in pensions at that. And that, I am glad to say has changed a lot but not much has changed consequently in terms of ethnic minorities being given positions of corporate responsibility. Particularly on the pensions side.
You can see this that, I have had many invites from many investment companies and law companies and briefings and lunches only to find myself as being the only ethnic minority face there and I do not believe this has changed that much. I once challenged a friend who worked at a top pensions consulting company to see if he could find a dozen pensions managers in the NAPF book. The old NAPF book. And he struggled to find more than a few.
There has been a shift over time, but is that enough? There are many fundamental changes required by those in recruitment and individuals in the industry. Unconscious bias training, I believe is - would be really beneficial throughout the organisations. We would like to have more role models to promote and encourage a wider selection of society to consider careers in pensions because pensions is not something somebody sits down one day and says 'I'd like to be a pensions manager' because it is not something people consider in that way.
We need to have role models who can go forward and show that there are careers to be made here. The use of mentorship programmes to have those already within the industry to progress further. There are still far too many BAME individuals in managerial directorship positions within the industry. Both on the client side and within the consulting firms. I think if we do some of those things then we should be able to have more ethnic minorities come into the pensions business and I think we will be richer for it.
I think that is it really, for me. Thank you for listening.
Elaine: Great. Thank you very much Khalid. We have got a few questions through here.
Khalid: Oh my go on!
Elaine: [laughs] Just before I get going, just to remind you all, if you would like to ask any questions please do so using the Q&A function just at the bottom of your screens.
Khalid, the question we have got here for you is, what is the one action that could be taken to encourage greater diversity in the pensions industry?
Khalid: I think, just if we could go back to the earlier slide. Unconscious bias training would be a massive massive help, I think. Coupled with the use of mentorship programmes, but the problem is that the problem is not downstream. The problem is that at directorship level, a lot of jobs - at least in my experience - a lot of recruitment of me was stopped at a much higher level and until the mixture of the boards changes, I think it is very difficult but everybody should be put through unconscious bias training I believe.
Elaine: Great. Thank you very much Khalid.
I will just go back now and pick up on some of the other questions that have come through while our speakers have been speaking. I think we have got one here for you Sharon. So, somebody has asked 'aside from increasing contribution levels, what do you see the role of employers as being in supporting the gender pension gap'.
Sharon: I guess, a big part of that is highlighting the ongoing importance of savings. I think that can be done by targeted communications. Helping women understand what their pension pot will actually provide and what it means. I think many of us, employers, members and as individuals as well, we are maybe lulled into a false sense of security and perhaps do not fully appreciate what the contributions that are being paid in, might actually equate to and often it is not enough going in to meet those expectations.
I think as well from an employer perspective, it is about offering a good quality pension vehicle which provides real value for members. And that is not just about rock bottom pricing, but it is about engagement tools, it is about that wider holistic support that a lot of pension arrangements can now support.
Are there any other savings vehicles that can be used alongside the pension as well to support needs? Perhaps employers could offer flexibility on the benefits package. And subject to meeting the minimum auto enrolment requirements, members or individuals and employees can just use the spend elsewhere and direct to shorter term savings in other ways and I guess as well, one of the big things is, offering flexible working policies and that might mean that women can work full-time rather than part-time.
Things like compressed hours for example and I think the pandemic has really shown us the possible. Certainly when it comes from working from home. I think lots of lessons to be learned from the pandemic as well.
Elaine: Great. Thanks very much Sharon. We have had a few more questions come through so, Khalid I think there is another one for you here. Somebody has asked 'what can pension schemes do now to engage more effectively with ethnic minority members'?
Khalid: Okay. I think with ethnic minority members. I think the older generation is the one that does not understand pensions that well. They are mostly coming up to retirement and if they have saved, they have saved and if they have not, then it is a different ballgame.
In terms of the youngsters, I think Comms is key and again, as Charlotte said, at MAN, we are targeting youngsters, doing specific communications for youngster. Whether they are from ethnic minorities or from the indigenous people, I think the problems are very similar in that they need clear understanding of what pensions means etc. and whether they have a way of saving and they have got this free money.
At MAN we have gone one step further and set up a process where people can access the company's contributions which they cannot afford to have in their pension fund because they cannot afford to pay matching contributions. They are allowed to have the extra contributions put into a lifeboat type fund after NI and tax and it can go into their lifeboat fund which they can then access. We tend to try and bring that - try to engage the youngsters using those tools so that they do get this extra money so the company does not just add it to its bottom line.
Elaine: That is really interesting. Thanks Khalid. We have got another question here which is along similar lines. I think, maybe Charlotte this is one for you.
There is a question of, 'how can we encourage millennials to save into their pensions when they may also be saving for milestones, such as buying a house or starting a family'.
Charlotte: Yes I think there is probably an assumption with younger people that they want to get married, they want to buy a house, going to start a family and that they have big savings goals to achieve those big milestone events and that they will think about retirement after they have gone through that process.
I think, as I have already discussed really, that this all stems from a lack of understanding that a lot of young people just do not quite appreciate how early people need to start saving and how much they need to start saving. A lot of young people just think it is something they can think about maybe when they are in their late thirties.
I think that the pensions industry really needs to make clear to younger people that pensions saving is something you need to start thinking about earlier, rather than later in life and that it is something that has to be factored into other savings goals.
It is something that needs to be saved for, throughout life, starting - as soon as you start work really. Again, I just do not think young people really appreciate that point until they have been educated and they have that reality check and understanding of how much they need to save for retirement.
Elaine: Great. Thank you. Khalid, there is another one for you here. A topical one. So someone has mentioned the recent government report on racism and suggested that - or, not suggested - said that the recent report dismissed unconscious bias training. I think you suggested unconscious bias training would be helpful, so the question is, 'have the government got it wrong and what are your views on this?'.
Khalid: Yes. This is definitely very topical. It has been very topical in my house. My daughter is a lawyer and so, she has been talking about this. She works in pensions. We believe that the - I do not think that all the views have been taken into account. There seems to be, certainly, reading The Guardian and also from our personal experiences, I would say that the report has been rewritten to reflect the government's view because they do not want to have to deal with another thing because of the pandemic or whether they do not believe it.
A lot of these findings do not really ring true. I mean, you talk to different people and I just cannot believe that they have come up with this conclusion and in fact, I believe the chairman of the committee has actually said they were not shown the report before it published. I think they need to go back to the drawing board, personally.
Elaine: Yes. Thank you Khalid. There is another question here, I am not sure who is best placed to answer this, so you can shout for it.
Someone has asked, 'how early should pensions education start'. Should we be targeting young people whilst they are still at school, or does that run the risk of dis-engaging young people early on?
Charlotte: I think that pensions as education should start at school. I think that there is probably, not even just about pensions really, I think there is just a general lack of understanding about financial saving. I think that young people just do not really think about it. They might think about, 'oh okay I roughly know what a mortgage is, but not really know much more than that' and I think younger people will think about pensions, they will just think, 'oh pensioners I will come to that when I am 65'.
I think the earlier it is possible, is really important so they just realise that pensions saving is just part of life.
Sharon: Yes. I would support that Charlotte as well. I have this conversation with my children and what are you doing at school? I am sure other parents do and I think because we work in pensions and have a bit of an idea about financial matters, it is quite staggering actually that they do not cover this in school.
As my nine year old often puts it, he needs to know how to pay for life? Because they have really really no clue whatsoever, so yes I would really endorse as early as possible but in obviously the right way.
Khalid: Elaine, I think there needs to be a module in secondary school and I supported a long time, and at one stage I thought maybe I could see if I could just go and talk to people at a local secondary school but actually never had the time. Have a module which just shows budgeting. How you deal with that, how you deal with basic finances because that is one of the things that we are doing throughout the communication end at MAN is actually having comms where young people think, actually I do not have any money left over therefore I cannot join the pension fund and it is because they have not budgeted. They have not done these things properly, only to see, actually the cost of a pint gives me this much money from the company.
This kind of thing, definitely I think it needs - budgeting is a big issue even when we - because we get loads of 18/19 year old apprentices that join us and of course they are not required to auto-enrol but some of them do once you have spoken to them, they will join. As a lower level of the scheme, and it is really important that youngsters learn how to budget.
Elaine: Yes. I agree Khalid and I agree with everything you have all just said, thank you. Another question through here which is again, I will open up to all three of you. Someone has asked, 'do you think the PLSA living standards are helpful in illustrating what pensions saving you need? Is the minimum even out of reach for most people or are they are a good starting point?'
Khalid: Elaine, I think it is a good starting point. We are doing a series of seminars in a couple of weeks' time, webinars. Part of what Charlotte was saying, one of the things we are doing to engage youngsters is launching an app that they can go and check their account and see how much money is in it and all this kind of stuff to try and fire them up a bit. Definitely I think it is something that I think would be a good idea.
Sharon: I was just going to say, yes absolutely endorse that. It is a step in the right direction. I think where we are now is by no means the finished article but it is very much a step in the right direction. Perhaps bringing to life in a different way. Different to perhaps how we have approached it in the past, the annual benefits statement which just tends to go in everyone's top drawer and is not really that useful as a tool in answering a lot of the questions that people have, so yes more work to be done.
I think what is important as well, is just have some degree of consistency across the market when we are looking at outcomes and what is appropriate. I think that that is something else that we should really consider as well.
Charlotte: I also would say that they are really helpful but they should be tied to actions. Obviously it is really important that people can - especially young people - can read the living standards and say, 'oh gosh I really need to be saving more'. But I think it is important that in that same communication, they are delivered in easy ways in which they can increase their contributions. Otherwise I think that young people will be, 'oh that is really bad' but because it is really difficult to actually do anything about it, they might just forget about it.
Khalid: I think the pensions dashboard actually will be quite useful because they will be able to see all the pensions. How much pensions they really have because that is another problem - most people have no idea how many places they worked and what that means and how much that is and whether they will be able to live on it, even.
So, something that can compare and I think that is what the PLSA figure does is say, well actually this is what I have, but I might need this to live on. For comparison purposes, I think it can be useful.
Elaine: Great. Thank you very much. I am conscious of timing so I think we will bring the Webinar and the Q&A's to an end here. There are a few questions that we have not got around to answering yet, so we will pick up on those individually after this Webinar.
A very big thank you, to Sharon, Khalid and Charlotte for your contribution today. It has been really interesting and really great. So thank you very much. And thank you everyone else for joining. As a reminder, we will be sending a short feedback survey around. If you could take the time to complete it, that would be really great. Just helps us inform what we do for future webinars.
Thank you very much everybody for joining. I hope you found today's session interesting. Have a good afternoon!